David Wallace - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Q….

‘More pussy than a toilet seat, man. I shit you not. Go on and ask Jackpot and Kenny if you want about it. Kenny Kirk’s the one named it the Asset. You go on.’

B.I. #42 06-97

PEORIA HEIGHTS IL

‘The soft plopping sounds. The slight gassy sounds. The little involuntary grunts. The special sigh of an older man at a urinal, the way he establishes himself there and sets his feet and aims and then lets out a timeless sigh you know he’s not aware of.

‘This was his environment. Six days a week he stood there. Saturdays a double shift. The needles-and-nails quality of urine into water. The unseen rustle of newspapers on bare laps. The odors.’

Q.

‘Top-rated historic hotel in the state. The finest lobby, the single finest men’s room between the two coasts, surely. Marble shipped from Italy. Stall doors of seasoned cherry. Since 1969 he’s stood there. Rococo fixtures and scalloped basins. Opulent and echoing. A large opulent echoing room for men of business, substantial men, men with places to go and people to see. The odors. Don’t ask about the odors. The difference in some men’s odors, the sameness in all men’s odors. All sounds amplified by tile and Florentine stone. The moans of the prostatic. The hiss of the sinks. The ripping extractions of deep-lying phlegm, the plosive and porcelain splat. The sound of fine shoes on dolomite flooring. The inguinal rumbles. The hellacious ripping explosions of gas and the sound of stuff hitting the water. Half-atomized by pressures brought to bear. Solid, liquid, gas. All the odors. Odor as environment. All day. Nine hours a day. Standing there in Good Humor white. All sounds magnified, reverberating slightly. Men coming in, men going out. Eight stalls, six urinals, sixteen sinks. Do the math. What were they thinking?’

Q….

‘It’s what he stands in. In the sonic center. Where the shine stand used to be. In the crafted space between the end of the sinks and the start of the stalls. The space designed for him to stand. The vortex. Just outside the long mirror’s frame, by the sinks — a continuous sink of Florentine marble, sixteen scalloped basins, leaves of gold foil around the fixtures, mirror of good Danish plate. In which men of substance drag material out of the corners of their eyes and squeeze their pores, blow their nose in the sinks and walk off without rinsing. He stood all day with his towels and small cases of personal-size toiletries. A trace of balsam in the three vents’ whisper. The vents’ threnody is inaudible unless the room is empty. He stands there when it’s empty, too. This is his occupation, this is his career. Dressed all in white like a masseur. Plain white Hanes T and white pants and tennis shoes he had to throw out if so much as a spot. He takes their cases and topcoats, guards them, remembers without asking whose is whose. Speaking as little as possible in all those acoustics. Appearing at men’s elbows to hand them towels. An impassivity that is effacement. This is my father’s career.’

Q….

‘The stalls’ fine doors end a foot from the floor — why is this? Why this tradition? Is it descended from animals’ stalls? Is the word stall related to stable? Fine stalls that afford some visual privacy and nothing else. If anything they amplify the sounds inside, bullhorns on end. You hear it all. The balsam makes the odors worse by sweetening them. The toes of dress shoes defiled along the row of spaces beneath the doors. The stalls full after lunch. A long rectangular box of shoes. Some tapping. Some of them humming, speaking aloud to themselves, forgetting they are not alone. The flatus and tussis and meaty splats. Defecation, egestion, extrusion, dejection, purgation, voidance. The unmistakable rumble of the toilet paper dispensers. The occasional click of nail-clippers or depilatory scissors. Effluence. Emission. Orduration, micturition, transudation, emiction, feculence, catharsis — so many synonyms: why? what are we trying to say to ourselves in so many ways?’

Q….

‘The olfactory clash of different men’s colognes, deodorants, hair tonic, mustache wax. The rich smell of the foreign and unbathed. Some of the stalls’ shoes touching their mate hesitantly, tentatively, as if sniffing it. The damp lisp of buttocks shifting on padded seats. The tiny pulse of each bowl’s pool. The little dottles that survive flushing. The urinals’ ceaseless purl and trickle. The indole stink of putrefied food, the eccrine tang to the jackets, the uremic breeze that follows each flush. Men who flush toilets with their feet. Men who will touch fixtures only with tissue. Men who trail paper out of the stalls, their own comet’s tail, the paper lodged in their anus. Anus. The word anus . The anuses of the well-to-do ranging above the bowls’ water, flexing, puckering, distending. Soft faces squeezed tight in effort. Old men who require all kinds of ghastly help — lowering and arranging another man’s shanks, wiping another man. Silent, wordless, impassive. Whisking the shoulders of another man, shaking off another man, removing a pubic hair from the pleat of another man’s slacks. For coins. The sign says it all. Men who tip, men who do not tip. The effacement cannot be too complete or they forget he is there when it comes time to tip. The trick of his demeanor is to appear only provisionally there, to exist all and only if needed. Aid without intrusion. Service without servant. No man wants to know another man can smell him. Millionaires who do not tip. Natty men who splatter the bowls and tip a nickel. Heirs who steal towels. Tycoons who pick their noses with their thumb. Philanthropists who throw cigar butts on the floor. Self-made men who spit in the sink. Wildly rich men who do not flush and without a thought leave it to someone else to flush because this is literally what they are used to — the old saw Would you do this at home .

‘He bleached his work clothes himself, ironed them. Never a word of complaint. Impassive. The sort of man who stands in one place all day. Sometimes the very soles of the shoes visible under there, in the stalls, of vomiting men. The word vomit . The mere word. Men being ill in a room with acoustics. All the mortal sound he stood in every day. Try to imagine. The soft expletives of constipated men, men with colitis, ileus, irritable bowel, lientery, dyspepsia, diverticulitis, ulcers, bloody flux. Men with colostomies handing him the bag to dispose of. An equerry of the human. Hearing without hearing. Seeing only need. The slight nod that in men’s rooms is acknowledgment and deferral at once. The ghastly metastasized odors of continental breakfasts and business dinners. A double shift when he could. Food on the table, a roof, children to educate. His arches would swell from the standing. His bare feet were blancmanges. He showered thrice daily and scrubbed himself raw but the job still followed him. Never a word.

‘The door tells the whole story. MEN . I haven’t seen him since 1978 and I know he’s still there, all in white, standing. Averting his eyes to preserve their dignity. But his own? His own five senses? What are those three monkeys’ names? His task is to stand there as if he were not there. Not really. There’s a trick to it. A special nothing you look at.’

Q.

‘I didn’t learn it in a men’s room, I can tell you that.’

Q….

‘Imagine not existing until a man needs you. Being there and yet not there. A willed translucence. Provisionally there, contingently there. The old saw Lives to serve . His career. Breadwinner. Every morning up at six, kiss us all goodbye, a piece of toast for the bus. He could eat for real on his break. A bellman would go to the deli. The pressure produced by pressure. The rich belches of expense-account lunches. The mirrors’ remains of sebum and pus and sneezed detritus. Twenty-six-no-seven years at the same station. The grave nod he’d receive a tip with. The inaudible thank-you to the regulars. Sometimes a name. All those solids tumbling out of all those large soft warm fat moist white anuses, flexing. Imagine. To attend so much passage. To see men of substance at their most elemental. His career. A career man.’